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Post by Shiba Kaigen on Nov 5, 2014 23:23:38 GMT
She fought against the urge to grind her teeth.
"Did you think I wanted pictures of bloodshed over my bed? I was trying to find some subject manner your mind would be willing to grap, but-"
He'd started laughing. Just a chuckle at first, but it had grown to cackling whoops with about as much dignity as a monkey.
"And what is so funny?!"
"It's just.. I just..."
Another cackle cut him off and he started pounding his fist against the wall.
"... you could've put up whatever you liked!"
He was doubled over now, rocking back and forth.
"I'm... sorry, but... your valiant effort... wasn't needed..."
He managed to point to himself.
"I'd be... fine with.. whatever you chose..."
She'd lowered her fan and found herself gaping at him, utterly shocked at his display.
"Put up flowers, court scenes, whatever..."
He seemed to be regaining some vestige of his composure.
"My dear wife. Please decorate as you see fit. You care and have good taste to rely upon, whereas I do not and have none. I yield the whole of our living arrangement's aesthetic to you."
"You'll... you'll wear a proper kimono?"
"Leave it where I can find it and why not? I won't be taking it back to the Legion with me, but that shouldn't worry you."
"But..."
"Please, Yukari... do not mistake my indifference for hostility. If I do not care enough to embrace fashion, I certainly don't care enough to spend my time actively hating it..."
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Post by Shiba Kaigen on Nov 6, 2014 8:22:19 GMT
And here I thought things were going so much better...
She'd walked away at a very high speed... while somehow managing to look poised and proper.
Kaigen sighed and sat on the battlements, looking out at the mountains.
And every damned one of them I've climbed. In full armor. Sensei insisted.
He wondered what he'd done wrong this time.
I said she could decorate whatever she liked and I'd dress as she pleased... what more does she want?
He turned the conversation over in his head, trying to figure out where he'd gone wrong.
Birth, most likely.
Should I have gone after her?
No, given what she thinks of me, she'd probably believe I was going to eat her.
He exhaled, then spat off of the wall.
If I'd ever imagined I'd live long enough to marry, I might have paid more attention when mother was blathering on about etiquette.
...
Mother.
Mother's a woman. Mother likes the same sorts of things...
Maybe I can get Mother to act as a translator!
Feeling enormously pleased with this brilliant line of reasoning, Kaigen got up and went looking for the woman who had borne him... and who still bore him better than most.
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Post by Shiba Kaigen on Nov 7, 2014 8:56:18 GMT
She'd decided to take him at his word in one respect, and the overhaul of their chambers continued apace. Tsudao and the Yobanjin had been replaced by the Fall of the Kami, flower arrangements now occupied appropriate positions, and she had her tea seat laid out.
She even moved the daisho stand to a more auspicious position.
All of which helped keep her from shrieking and throwing heavy things around.
"I love what you've done with the place..."
Yukari started and turned at her mother in law's voice.
"I... I am pleased that you appreciate it, Tsue-san..."
"Well, someone should."
The older woman sighed and made an adjustment to an imaginary thread hanging off of her sleeve.
"My son has just been to see me, to enlist my efforts as an... intermediary."
She gave an amused smile.
"But that is not why I'm here. My youngest daughter is trying to improve her ikebana skills... and as these demonstrate-"
She gestured to several of Yukari's arrangements.
"- you might be able to teach her a thing or two."
Yukari blinked, hid a rising blush behind her sleeve, and managed to get out.
"I would be delighted."
As she made to follow her mother-in-law, Yukari gave the room another once-over.
Not so bad... now I just need to replace that horrible old futon...
"Oh, there is ONE thing I will convey from my son, because I believe he will find some way to say it poorly the next time he sees you, and I think to have it misunderstood would be a pity..."
Tsue composed her thoughts for a moment, clearly re-parsing some jumbled collection of words Kaigen had bestowed upon her.
"He says you may be the most patient woman he has ever spent this much time around, and that he appreciates that fact."
Tactfully, Tsue left out the part where that had been preceded that, where he'd blathered about how she was "so damn pretty it wasn't like it mattered what she wore."
No need to overburden the poor girl more than she already had
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Post by Shiba Kaigen on Nov 7, 2014 13:08:57 GMT
Well, Mother wasn't much help.
Things were marginally better, it was true, but apart from his room looking like a garden gone mad, there hadn't been any concrete results to speak of.
Well, that, and he was starting to go insane from sheer boredom. One can only run the battlements so many times before one's mind starts wandering hither, thither, and yon.
He somehow doubted that returning to Legion without even consummating his marriage was a suggestion that was going to hold much water.
But there just wasn't anything for him to do.
His gear was all in perfect repair, he didn't have to go looking for the supply wagons to demand why he and his men hadn't been fed, there were no enemies within a hundred miles, and, probably because he'd finally escaped Kyuden Seppun, no murders had happened on his watch in months.
He'd tried some practice sparring with some of the local bushi, but none of them wanted to anymore.
Something about how he hadn't been breathing hard after beating three of them had sat wrong with their pride.
I suppose I could get drunk.
He'd been refraining out of deference to his new wife's delicate sensibilities, but since that cause seemed lost...
Oh well.
Finding sake was easy.
Finding a quiet, unobtrusive place to get sauced, on the other hand...
And thus it was that Shiba Kaigen found himself on the rooftop of one of the watchtowers, carefully balanced with a sake bottle in one hand, and his cup in the other.
Suppose I could just swig it out of the bottle and keep my hands free...
Yes, but then my chance of falling off of this damn thing and saving us all a great deal of trouble will be lessened.
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Post by Shiba Kaigen on Nov 14, 2014 5:11:00 GMT
The singing was atrocious. It was off-key. It was loud. It was... overhead?
Yukari peered up into the twilight.
No doubt about it. Someone was singing, badly, about... something to do with a lost kappa and a miko.
Of course I would end up married to a man who fancies himself both a monkey and a musician.
Well. At least he's good at one of them... how did he get UP there?
"... Husband?"
The song trailed off like someone had finally finished strangling an insane bear to still its bellowing.
"I know you're up there, you weren't exactly subtle."
"You should join me."
"... What?"
"Come on up, it's a beautiful night, I have some sake left, and you're a damned sight better looking than anybody else I could have up here."
"It would be... unseemly. Besides, I am not dressed for a climb."
"Neither was I. Wouldn't be the most unseemly thing that's happened to you this week."
He had a point. A stupid point, but a point nonetheless.
"I may require assistance. If you could-"
He was on the wall beside her. He'd simply dropped down with an agility hard to credit to a man so inebriated.
"I will always help you if I know you need it. Just get on my back."
"I am not a child!"
"No, but it is the quickest way."
"Carry someone's entire weight on your drunken back is the quickest way?"
"My dear wife, I believe I've worn armor that weighs more than you."
Looking around, and then resigning herself to the fact that propriety was pretty well shattered, she moved behind him and looped her arms around his neck. It was the first time they'd touch more than one another's hands, and she was quietly shocked at the sheer power she felt in his back muscles as he started to climb, almost effortlessly.
She looked down, and stifled a gasp. They were very, very high up, and she reflexively tightened her hold on him. He barely seemed to notice.
"If you're willing, I'd suggest using your legs. Had to carry a gunso on my back like this once. He hooked his heels around my waist, but... no? Fair enough. You're lighter than he was by far."
The view of the sunset from the rooftop was, she had to admit, once she'd released him and taken a look around, breathtaking.
"It is.. beautiful up here..."
"Is it?"
She allowed herself an exasperated sigh.
"Did you not say it was a beautiful evening? Do you find beauty in anything?"
He fixed her with a drunkenly measuring look.
"Since you ask? Yes."
"... Well?"
He rolled his eyes at that.
"Yukari, I see mountains and rivers as obstacles to be crossed, I see flowers as just part of the scenery one walks past, I see art, and sculpture, and all of that as things for someone else, someone better than me. What do you suppose is left?"
"I suppose you'll tell me it's the skill at arms or some such-"
"Fighting is nothing pretty, Yukari. It is ugly business best left to ugly men. The finest technique holds no beauty for me."
"Then what-"
"I'm talking about you, you silly woman!"
He poured a cup of sake and offered it to her.
"I sometimes think this would have been easier for me had you been ugly, or at least plain. But no, for my sins, I am given a wife I have nothing in common with, and who the very sight of makes me distracted."
She took the sake in hands that felt like they belonged to someone else.
"You... think I'm-"
"You are the only beauty in my life, Shiba Yukari. Distant or close, you're it."
"The words of a drunken man!"
"Drunken men seldom lie."
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Post by Shiba Kaigen on Nov 15, 2014 11:33:46 GMT
A single shaft of sunlight found its way unerringly across Kaigen's eyes, evoking a muffled curse and a very, very slow and reluctant waking.
He sat up and looked about him.
Back in my room. I recall, something about...
Oh. Well. As she did not stab me in my sleep, I can only assume she is fled, perhaps all the way to Nikesake by now...
Yukari, some distance away, but on the same sleeping mat, rolled over and mumbled something that wasn't quite a word.
Oh.
Hm. First time that's happened.
...
If anything interesting happened that I do not remember, I am going to laugh, then cry, then hurl myself from the battlements headfirst.
He scratched at his chin.
Let's see... I was getting good and drunk up on the roof, she came and found me, I invited her up, then carried her up, we started talking...
Nothing good ever came of their talking, so what had happened?
What fresh idiocy did I inflict upon her...
His eyes widened as the memory swam its way through the hangover.
I called her beautiful... but she knew that... and then...
The realization crept on him with a cold, sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.
I tried my hand at poetry, didn't I?
He started looking about his person for traps. If he'd inflicted his verse upon her, she was clearly only so close to him in order to better view his gruesome demise in whatever she'd cooked up.
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Post by Shiba Kaigen on Nov 16, 2014 21:16:49 GMT
Yukari awoke to discover that, rather than trotting off in full armor to run the walls, her husband had actually stuck around.
He looked a bit nervous, but of course that was to be expected, given the tenor of their relationship.
And he might have something of a hangover...
She'd certainly gotten drunker than she'd intended, and since he had apparently been trying to get drunk... well. The prospects for his day were quite grim.
"Husband."
"Yukari."
"Is something amiss?"
More than usual, I mean.
"Did I, uh... do anything exceptionally awful, crude, or stupid last night that I have somehow forgotten?"
Actually, for you, you were a perfect gentleman.
"Nothing exceptional."
"I have a dim memory of mutilating the form of poetry in your presence..."
"You did. Your poetic efforts were crude, clumsy, occasionally blasphemous, and generally inept... but they were efforts, all the same."
He blinked, as if processing that.
"So... my poetry was as awful as it has always been, but you're not... mad?"
"At least you tried. I do not think you have any future whatsoever in the field of poetry, but..."
But I'd been starting to wonder if you even understood what culture is. Now I know you're just exceptionally bad at it.
"Well, uh... thanks?"
"You are most welcome. I only hope you do not expect me to return the favor and take a wild stab at kenjutsu."
"I... think we'll give that a pass."
"Do you... require an ukon tea?"
"Hm? Oh, no, I've ridden out far worse, and anyway, ukon doesn't actually work."
He gave her a sidelong glance, then grinned.
"I think this is the first time I've ever seen you not all done up..."
Oh. Right. My hair probably looks like a rat's nest...
"I apologi-"
"Yukari, you look fine."
He grinned.
"Just a little more human today, that's all."
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